KNOWLEDGE BASED PATH SET UP AND SPARE CAPACITY ASSIGNMENT FOR DISTRIBUTED NETWORK RESTORATION

摘要

In a telecommunications network having a plurality of intelligent nodes (101-106) interconnected by multiple communication channels (121-128), alternate paths and spare channels (151-158) are set up for restoring traffic disrupted by failure to one or more of the communications channels. The alternate paths may be set up irrespective of the number of custodial node pairs, also referred to as leader/follower or sender/chooser pairs, that could simultaneously be involved in the restoration operation. The interconnected nodes (101-106) have bidirectional working and/or spare channels (131-138 and 151-158). There is stored at each node in the network participating in the recovery operation a spare channel manifest for each of the leader/follower combinations.